The Jeff Beck Group - Marquee Club, London, Britain, 9-26-1967

There are surprisingly few decent sounding concert bootlegs by the early Jeff Beck Group, when Jeff Beck joined forces with Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood for three years in the late 1960s. This one has been shared as a bootleg for ages, but the sound quality was just okay, in my opinion. However, in 2023, a person named Goody made a bunch of sonic fixes to it. Goody always does good work, and indeed the Goody version sounds much better. However, there still were some issues. I made some more audio edits, so it sounds better still.

The Jeff Beck Group was formed in early 1967. Soon, the band recorded two singles, which were hits in Britain: "Hi Ho Silver Lining" and "Tallyman." However, these were songs imposed on them by pop producer Mickie Most, and the band didn't really like them much. You can actually hear Stewart mocking them a bit in banter between songs here, by asking the audience if the band should play "Hi Ho Silver Lining" or "Tallyman," and then playing neither of them. Despite the two hits, the band was still relatively unknown at the time of this concert. Stewart, especially, would go on to become a rock superstar later, but at this time he was an unknown. That's why the poster for this concert only mentioned "Jeff Beck," without even adding the "Group" part. Beck, at least, had developed an impressive reputation as a lead guitarist in the Yardbirds.

The band's first album, "Truth," wouldn't be released until July 1968. At this point, they were touring to improve their musical chemistry and boost their reputation. So it's interesting to have a concert recording of this band at this relatively early stage. Only three of the songs performed here, "Let Me Love You," "I Ain't Superstitious," and "Rock My Plimsoul," would make it onto "Truth."

Regarding the additional audio edits I made, as mentioned above, the big problem as I saw is was that the vocals were way too low in the mix. Goody has a different approach than I do, fixing problems like adjusting the azimuth, pitch, and phase, but not making drastic changes. Whereas I'm all in favor of drastic changes if I think it improves the recording. So I greatly boosted the vocals relative to the instruments. I think it sounds much better now, though note this is still an audience bootleg, not something of pristine soundboard quality.

The last song, "I Can't Hold Out," is the second time that song was performed in this concert. I'm guessing the band played two sets, but for some reason only a bit of one of the sets was recorded. One can hear right at the end of that song Stewart announcing "Let Me Love You" as the next song, which was exactly the same earlier in the album. Also, the first half a minute or so of that song was missing. It was a lucky thing we have the other version, because I was able to use that to patch in the missing part. That's why that song has "[Edit]" in its title. 

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 Stone Cold Crazy (Jeff Beck Group)
02 talk (Jeff Beck Group)
03 I Can't Hold Out (Jeff Beck Group)
04 talk (Jeff Beck Group)
05 Let Me Love You (Jeff Beck Group)
06 talk (Jeff Beck Group)
07 I Ain't Superstitious (Jeff Beck Group)
08 talk (Jeff Beck Group)
09 I Think I'll Be Leaving This Morning (Jeff Beck Group)
10 talk (Jeff Beck Group)
11 Rock My Plimsoul (Jeff Beck Group)
12 Jeff's Boogie [Instrumental] (Jeff Beck Group)
13 Wee Wee Baby (Jeff Beck Group)
14 [I Know] I'm Losing You (Jeff Beck Group)
15 talk (Jeff Beck Group)
16 Oh Pretty Woman (Jeff Beck Group)
17 I Can't Hold Out [Second Version] [Edit] (Jeff Beck Group)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/TqU95Trd

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/nps6CGHlyytFYfD/file

The cover art is rather strange this time. That's because I found the poster from a concert by this band that took place just three nights later. I liked it and decided to use it. 

If the style looks familiar to you, that's because it was made by Martin Sharp, the same person who made the cover art for the Cream albums "Disraeli Gears" and "Wheels of Fire." (He also wrote the lyrics of the Cream songs "Tales of Brave Ulysses and "Anyone for Tennis".) I had to make some adjustments to get the rectangular poster fit into a square space. The main thing I did was remove the venue name (UFO Roundhouse) and replace that with "Jeff Beck" from lower in the poster. Then I added some more text at the bottom. I've included the entire poster here, since it's so interesting.